YES Network, FSN Northwest and DIRECTV will present the first-ever Major League Baseball telecasts in 3D on Saturday, July 10 and Sunday, July 11 when the New York Yankees take on the Seattle Mariners. DIRECTV and Panasonic will be presenting sponsors of the two 3D telecasts.

The historic 3D broadcasts from Safeco Field in Seattle, will be made available to DIRECTV HD customers, who have 3D TV sets and live within the YES “home team footprint,” which includes all of New York State and Connecticut, north and central New Jersey, and northeast Pennsylvania.

As Roger Ebert recently wrote, “3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension.” 3D — be it in movies, sporting events or what have you — adds basically nothing to the experience. When you watch a ballgame (or a movie or anything else) on a screen, your brain automatically accounts for the two dimensionality of the picture and adjusts. Really: have you ever watched a game on TV in which you couldn’t follow the action because it wasn’t in 3D? Of course not. Technically speaking the picture may be in 2D but, thanks to your brain, you really are experiencing it in three dimensions.

So why bother? The sponsorship of this little experience tells you all you need to know: Panasonic sells 3D televisions. They’d like you to buy more of them, thank you. If they can do so by providing a product that absolutely no one is screaming out for, more power to them, but I personally hope this falls flat.

Now, if they want to add gimmicky and antiquated “technology” to baseball broadcasts, they can add smell-o-vision and give me the aromas of the ballpark. I’d pay for that. 3D, though? No thanks.

The Oakland Athletics ballpark saga has dragged on for years and years and years. They’ve considered San Jose, Fremont and at least three locations in Oakland as potential new ballpark sites. The whole process has lasted almost as long as the Braves and Rangers played in their old parks before building new ones.

In the past several months the Athletics’ “stay in Oakland” plan has gained momentum. At one point the club thought it had an agreement to build a new place near Peralta/Laney College in downtown Oakland. There have been hiccups with that, so two other sites — Howard Terminal, favored by city officials — and the current Oakland Coliseum site have remained in play. There are pros and cons to each of these sites, as we have discussed in the past.

One consideration not mentioned before was mentioned by team president David Kaval yesterday: sea level rise due to climate change. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Kaval mentioned twice that the Howard Terminal site would have to take into account sea-level rise and transportation concerns — and he said there have been conversations with the city and county and the Joint Powers Authority about developing the Coliseum site.

The Howard Terminal/Jack London Square area of Oakland has been identified as susceptible to dramatically increased flooding as a result of projected sea level rise due to climate change. On the other side of the bay both the San Francisco Giants and Golden State Warriors have had to consider sea level rise in their stadium/arena development plans. Now it’s the Athletics’ turn.

Fifteen of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams play in coastal areas and another five of them play near the Great Lakes. While some of our politicians don’t seem terribly concerned about it all, people and organizations who will have skin the game 10, 20 and 50 years from now, like the Oakland Athletics, are taking it into account.